California Towns Enact Butane Limits To Curb Hash Oil Production

The extract market may be booming, but a lot of California governments are trying to stop extractors from going boom all over their towns. Sacramento County is the latest to try to legislate hash oil manufacturing into decline with a limit on butane purchases.

County supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to cap the amount of butane a retailer can sell to 600 milliliters per customer, as reported by the Sacramento Bee. Customers will be required to give their information and have it logged in a database as well. The ordinance goes into effect on June 22.

Most cans contain 300-400 ml of butane, and 600 ml is enough to make 4 to 8 grams of extract. So, a small, personal run is still very doable within county constraints, but commercial runs will be tricky unless you want to hit up every store in the county or get your butane from elsewhere.

The major concern seems not to be with an influx of concentrate in the communities but with injuries associated with amateur BHO manufacture. The chief of the burn division at area hospital UC Davis Medical Center told the Sac Bee that butane hash oil-related burn victims have been on the rise, with reported BHO injuries now accounting for 7 percent of all patients the unit sees.

Division chief Dr. David Greenhalgh compared the situation to the increase of burn victims in the 1990s due to explosive methamphetamine labs. At the time, authorities tried to stop the problem by controlling the sale of a key ingredient, pseudoephedrine. “When they got control of the pseudoephedrine, they stopped having that problem,” Greenhalgh said.

There are, of course, differences between the two phenomena. Butane does not, like pseudoephedrine, contain an active ingredient in the drug it creates. It’s merely a solvent used to perform the extraction. It’s possible that manufacturers will turn to other means of extraction such as CO2 or even water. But then it’s also possible that they’ll just order their n-butane on Amazon instead.

Sacramento is far from alone in their concern. Nearby cities Eureka and Red Bluff have already enacted similar butane-capping regulations. Last year the Chino City Council limited sales of refined butane to 1,200 ml per sale, and created its own log to keep track of butane transactions.